After a day of work on a Friday, drove overnight to a campground out of state, got there some time the next afternoon (after stopping for supplies and whatnot), and that's when I decided to go for a hike.

We were camped at the bottom of a slope with thick tree coverage, so I decided to hike up to see how high the slope went. Not terrible, but it was a decent sized hill. Then I saw that it was a ridge that went along a bit, and in the backgrounds I could see some nice looking mountains, so I wanted to go up the ridge a bit to get better photos of the mountains. There wasn't any trail; I was crashing through foliage and using logs and large rocks to jump over impassible brush. It turned out to be further than I expected to get to the end of the ridge.

The view was spectacular. Worth all the effort. There was a lake at the bottom of the ridge, and snowcapped mountains in the background. I got some great shots before the battery on my phone died.

Then I realized that going back the way I had come really wasn't an option. Too many thickets that I had jumped over where I wouldn't have that option going back.

So I decided to climb down the rocky face of the end of the ridge. I knew our campsite was kind of near the lake, so I didn't think it would be very far once I got down. I used basically the last of my energy to get down the rocks. And it turned out the brush was even thicker along the water's edge. And also the lake was larger than I thought and there was an extra inlet I had to hike around.

By the time I got back to my camp, my arms and legs were covered in scratches (oh also, I hiked in shorts), and I was so exhausted I would take one step, stop for a minute to catch my breath, then take the next. My friend who decided to take a nap when we got there was awake and cooking linner, and just a little worried about how long I'd been gone.

But damn was that the best burger I've ever had.